Guest Professorship for Photography

The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and the Dresden-based association Portraits Hellerau e.V. are continuing their cooperation with the Dresden University of Fine Arts (HfBK): in the winter semester of 2025/2026, the renowned Singaporean artist Sim Chi Yin will take up the temporary international guest professorship for photography at the university. She will also be appointed to the jury of the »PORTRAITS – Hellerau Photography Award 2026«.

Following the successful launch with Laura El Tantawy in 2023, the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and Portraits Hellerau e.V. are supporting this important initiative for the second time. The three partners share the common goal of expanding artistic instruction in photography at HfBK Dresden and introducing students to the perspectives of renowned international photographers through this guest professorship. It also contributes to strengthening Dresden as a location for contemporary artistic photography. The decision to award the guest professorship was made by a joint jury of the partner institutions.

The guest professorship is part of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation’s comprehensive programme to support young photographers, which includes awards, scholarships and exhibition opportunities for young artists, as well as formats that promote the academic dialogue on the subject of photography. This guest professorship will supplement the existing teaching programme at the HfBK Dresden with a project-based workshop for master’s and advanced students, led by Sim Chi Yin. An exhibition in December 2025 in the rooms of the university will show the students’ artistic work created during the workshop.

The jury for the international competition »PORTRAITS – Hellerau Photography Award« includes Sim Chi Yin, art historian Angela Matyssek, and curator and photographer Daniel Blochwitz. Together, they will select the entries for the final round of the award from the artistic submissions. Sim Chi Yin follows renowned colleagues such as Carla van de Puttelaar, Francesca Cesari, and Ute Mahler on this committee.

Sim Chi Yin’s research-based practice uses artistic and archival interventions to contest historiographies and colonial narratives and to reflect their complexity. She works across photography, film, installation, performance and book-making. Based in Berlin, Sim has exhibited at the 60th Venice Biennale (2024) and at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2024), Camera Austria, Graz (2024), Gropius Bau, Berlin (2023), the Barbican, London (2023), Harvard Art Museums, Boston, USA (2021), or »Les Rencontres de la Photographie« in Arles, France (2021), amongst others.

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Impressions from the 2023 guest professorship workshop and exhibition with Laura El-Tantawy